All’s well that ends well

Sometimes the days that don’t start off well end quite nicely.

The first half of today was a bit rough. I took care of some things that I needed to do, but it was a bit exhausting. There were a lot of minor annoyances, like my computer not working properly, that turned slightly difficult tasks into big frustrations.

I needed to leave the house at 2:30 in order to get my full workout in before dinner this evening. I didn’t make it out of the house until a little after 3. I made it to the bus stop, and stood there for quite some time in the cold wind, feeling sorry for myself. Too sorry for myself to check to see when the next bus was coming (the schedule was also hanging upside down, I think it broke in the wind). Finally, I read the sign and realized that I still had six minutes to wait. Plus, the bus usually arrives at my stop a few minutes after the scheduled time.

Since the bus stop is right in front of the post office, I decided to run in to make a deposit into my savings account and get out some grocery money. They were tasks I needed to do anyway, and they hardly take any time. Imagine my surprise when I came back out and saw that the bus was already disappearing into the distance. I looked at the clock on my iPod and saw that it was only one minute past the scheduled arrival time. Of all days for the bus to actually be on time!

Well, as you can imagine, by this time I was really feeling sorry for myself.  So, I hailed a cab to go across town to the gym (yes, I know that riding to the gym in a cab sounds bizarre). I actually took the cab to the station and walked to the gym from there.

At the gym, I had a nice workout that was only slightly abbreviated (the cab really made up some time, I think). It was good to get those endorphins going. After my workout, the teacher who had invited me to dinner (hereafter, Mr. Science)was waiting with his adorable six year old daughter. She was so cute and wanted to practice English. Then, we met up with the other teacher (hereafter, Ms. English) who was also going to dinner, and went back to the apartment where Mrs. Science had prepared a delicious spread of food.

Everyone was so friendly, and we all had a good time eating and chatting. Thankfully, Ms. English was able to help with some interpretation (although we all got pretty stuck at tribal languages). My Japanese is getting to the point where I can recognize a lot of words. Unfortunately, I usually miss the key words or can’t figure out how the sentence goes together. Argh.

The youngest Science daughter (the one who is six), was just hilarious. She has picked up many English words. She also showed us her pets, her origami, and she even did a short magic show for us. It was absolutely adorable. She is also very interested in insects. So, I pretended to be interested when she showed me her bug books. She also showed me a map, and she knew the Japanese flag, the American flag, the Chinese flag, and the Korean flag. Se had a hard time finding Japan on the map, though. Her sister asked her where it was, and she thought for a while, and then pointed to Kazakhstan. She was delighted when her sister pointed at Japan and she read the kanji.

All is all, it was a lovely evening, and I’m so glad that Mr. Science and his family had us over!